More Screen Time for Toddlers Might Not Be as Bad as We Thought, Study Finds

You’ve heard the recommendations: Keep kids away from screens until age 2, and then keep contact minimal to help foster social and mental development. While the idea is simple enough in concept, it’s trickier in practice. Between your smartphone, computer, tablet and TV, it’s hard to keep your little one completely sheltered from screens. But a new study in the journal Child Development suggests that strictly managing kids' screen time may not be as beneficial as previously believed.

The AAP’s current screen time guidelines

In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new guidelines on screen time that suggest parents prioritize creative, unplugged playtime. The guidelines recommend that young babies be shielded from screens altogether other than video chatting; beginning at 18 months, kids can begin watching high-quality kids programming, with kids 2 to 5 years limited to one hour of screen time per day. Parents should also co-view with kids (instead of plopping a little one in front of the screen and taking care of bills or housework) to help them understand what they’re viewing. Pediatricians are concerned that using media can replace physical activity, hands-on exploration and real world social interaction, all of which are critical to learning. Policy authors include Sesame Workshop and Common Sense — two of the organizations recommended as high-quality screen time.

What the study looked at

Between 2011 and 2012, researchers from Oxford University conducted phone interviews with almost 20,000 American parents of 2- to 5-year-olds to discuss their kids’ use of screens compared to AAP guidelines as well as their kids’ well-being over the past month The kids were representative of ethnicity and income among the general American population.

Parents were asked to rated four statements over the last month using a 5-point scale. Questions assessed attachment ("[He/She] is affectionate and tender with you"); emotional resilience ("[He/She] bounces back quickly when things don’t go [his/her] way"); curiosity (“[He/ She] shows interest and curiosity in learning new things”); and positive affect ("[He/She] smiles and laughs a lot"). Taken together, the questions were meant to assess a little one’s overall well-being. Caregivers then estimated how many hours their kids spent in front of screens, both phones/electronic devices and the television.

Researchers then compared screen time to parents’ ratings of their children’s well-being, taking into account other factors that could come into play (including ethnicity, age, gender, household income, and caregiver education).

What it found

On average, kids spent about two hours with digital screens each day; about seven in 10 kids surpassed the AAP’s new limits of one hour of screen time daily, with about four in 10 surpassing previous guidance of limiting screen time to two hours daily. They found that kids’ screen time increases with age and with less educated caregivers in families with lower household incomes.

Although little ones who screens according to AAP guidelines scored higher in resilience, they had lower levels of positive affect (i.e., experiencing positive moods like joy, interest and alertness) than those who did not follow AAP guidelines. However when they rejiggered for demographic and background factors, these very small differences disappeared. They suggest that there might even be extremely small positive effects of using digital media up to seven hours per day for both television and computer-based media. The researchers conclude that this and other studies have shown that those who did not, result in slightly greater overall well-being in kids.

"Taken together, our findings suggest that there is little or no support for the theory that digital screen use, on its own, is bad for young children's psychological wellbeing," lead author Andrew Przybylski, PhD, an associate professor and senior research fellow with the Oxford Internet Institute, told ScienceDaily. "If anything, our findings suggest the broader family context, how parents set rules about digital screen time, and if they're actively engaged in exploring the digital world together, are more important than the raw screen time."

The paper goes on to suggest that the AAP’s recommendations are out of date, given the omnipresence of screens in our lives these days, and that more research should be done to figure out how screen time should be turned into a social experience that can actually help parents and kids bond.

"Given that we cannot put the digital genie back in the bottle, it is incumbent on researchers to conduct rigorous, up-to-date research that identifies mechanisms by and the extent to which screen-time exposure might affect children," said co-author Netta Weinstein, PhD, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cardiff University.

What this means for you

It’s important to keep in mind that while the survey was large, it was brief and relied on very broad estimates — not always the most hard-fact indicator. What’s more, as the authors note the study doesn’t delve into the quality of the time kids spent in front of the TV — i.e., were they just plunked down and left alone, or were parents involved in co-viewing with kids? Even these authors, who are much more liberal about the possible upsides to screen time, said it’s important for parents to be involved with their little ones’ screen time.

So what should you, as a parent, take away from this study? It’s still wise to stick by the AAP’s recommendations of one hour of screen time a day or less as often as possible. But the research shows that more screen time might actually be less of an issue than we thought (and even potentially beneficial, up to a point). So if your baby or toddler has a little extra screen time, don't sweat it. And try to follow best practices when your child is in front of a screen, which means:

It's okay to use your smartphone or tablet to temporarily distract your kids in certain situations — like on long flights. Just try to avoid falling back on those devices as the only way to calm your child.

Turn the TV off when you're not watching it to avoid excessive exposure to background TV.

Try to always watch media with your kids to help them understand what they're seeing and apply it to the real world.